Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Hayward Gallery, London
5 May 2006 to 7 July 2006
Reviewed by: Capucine Perrot
An exhibition through reading?
UNDERCOVER SURREALISM – Picasso, Miró, Masson and the vision of Georges Bataille. 11 May to 30 July 2006
The guiding thread of this exhibition is the French magazine Documents. This had only an ephemeral existence (15 issues) between april 1929 and January 1931 and had as topics ‘doctrines (that became variétés a few issues after), archéologie, beaux-arts, ethnographie’. This magazine created by Georges Bataille is well known for having brought an intellectual movement into light. The latter was opposed to the idealism and the aesthetic of this period and so implied a split with surrealism. Documents aspired to present its images and contents with no artifice and to combine different areas under discussion. By underlining the specific approach that Documents had with works of art and the connection of subjects, this exhibition seeks to ‘reflect both the subversive energy and the violent confrontation of imagery and ideas found in Documents’. But how does this work?
Divided into several sections from ‘Dali and Crimes’, ‘André Masson, Slaughter Houses and Sacrifice’, ‘Georges Bataille and the Cabinet of Medals’, ‘Cinema’, ‘Music’ and so on to finish by ‘Head and Skull’, Undercover Surrealism takes place on the Hayward’s ground floor. Accordingly some Picasso’s, Dali’s, Boiffard’s or some anonymous pictures can be found dispersed and associated with manuscripts, medals, coins, masks, newspapers articles, musical extracts, films…etc. The exhibition refers to titles or questions that authors and critics dealt with in Documents. Each room begins with a quote of one of the issues and exhibits ‘in real’ what was ‘just’ represented in this edition. As always, a text is also here at the entrance of each section to explain what the room is all about, what we need to see, to look at, what we need to understand from this room and all the tools or keys are given in order for us to appreciate the set up.
And here we are, reading all these quotes, captions, presentation texts, some signs everywhere - we don’t even need to look at the works, we just need to read. The explanatory signs are usually two times bigger than the works (but still compete with the size of the display cabinet) and we know it’s not because it has to be easy to read from a long distance. We can’t disregard these indications and therefore the works loose their priority, or even their credit. A feeling of emptiness is there and not just in Picasso’s room in which seven small paintings are lost in such a wide room with an interpretative text that is as large as the seven paintings put together.
Documents, both its contents and the works, are displayed as if they were a testimony to the past as well as here to help to contextualise the intellectual scene of Paris in the late 20s. We hardly get the significance that this kind of publication and intellectual project can still have at the present time. The ‘subversive energy’ (quote from the presentation leaflet) can be read on the wall, then again is not manifest because of this set-up, the way everything seems to be classified, to fit in a small box, in a section or in a display cabinet. But Documents was about transcending boundaries. The exhibition seems to be a juxtaposition of works (and then rooms) that are here only to illustrate the interpretative texts, and not an exhibition thought as a whole. Is it because Undercover Surrealism wanted to ‘echo the collage methodology’ (introduction text of the catalogue) of Documents? Without the texts and signs, what is left? A vast space with a few spread out works of art seen as relic.
Documents is often described as a ‘war machine against received ideas’; thus by choosing the exhibition as medium to present the magazine’s subversion and ‘its radical questioning’, you might have to question as well the exhibition. Referring to this latter term, where is the ‘radical questioning’ of this exhibition? How could presenting this magazine as a museum object be avoided? Not everything has been digested yet.
An exhibition through reading? It is as if we were in a book, we go from one room to another like we turn pages; like there is text and an illustration next to it, here there is a presentation board and a Picasso. In the same way, at the end of a publication there is a bibliography or some author’s notes, here there is a lecture room with numerous novels, catalogues, Documents’ copies and so on to enlarge the perspectives. It is when we realise that the catalogue of this exhibition would have maybe been enough. Should Undercover Surrealism in fact be approached as a three-dimensional publication? It is as if the exhibition was simultaneously its own catalogue.
Capucine Perrot.
Venue detail:
Hayward Gallery
Belvedere Road, South Bank, London SE1 8XX
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